Passat (ship)

''Passat'' is a German four-masted steel barque and one of the Flying P-Liners, the famous sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. She is one of the last surviving windjammers. (The name "Passat" is German for ''trade wind''.)

History

''Passat'' was launched in 1911 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard, Hamburg. She began her maiden voyage on Christmas Eve 1911 toward Cape Horn and the nitrate ports of Chile. She was used for decades to ship general cargo outbound and nitrate home. ''Passat'' was interned at Iquique for the duration of World War I and sailed in 1921 to Marseille and was turned over to France as war reparation. The French government put her up for sale, and the Laeisz Company was able to buy back the ship for £13,000. Again she was used as a nitrate carrier until 1932 when ''Passat'' was sold to the Gustaf Erikson Line of Finland. The ship was then used in the grain trade from Spencer Gulf in South Australia to Europe. At the onset of World War II, ''Passat'' was at her home port Mariehamn in the Åland Islands of Finland. She was towed in 1944 to Stockholm to serve as a storage ship.

In 1948 the Erikson Line reentered the grain trade, and together with ''Pamir'' she participated in the last Great Grain Race in 1949 from Port Victoria around Cape Horn to Europe. Among her crew was Niels Jannasch who later became the director of Canada's Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. All told, ''Passat'' rounded Cape Horn 39 times.

Edgar Erikson (son of Gustaf Erikson, who died in 1947) found he could no longer operate either ''Passat'' or ''Pamir'' at a profit, primarily due to changing regulations and union contracts governing employment aboard ships; the traditional 2-watch system on sailing ships was replaced by the 3-watch system in use on motor-ships, requiring more crew.Stark, ''The Last Time Around Cape Horn. The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer Pamir'', p. 200 In March 1951, Belgian shipbreakers paid £40,000 for both ''Passat'' and ''Pamir''.

German shipowner Heinz Schliewen stepped in and bought both ships for conversion to freight carrying school ships (thus often erroneously referred to as sister ships). The two vessels were modernized at Kiel with refurbished quarters to accommodate merchant marine trainees, fitted with an auxiliary diesel engine, a refrigeration system for the galleys (precluding the need to carry live animals for fresh meat), modern communications equipment and water ballast tanks. After financial problems for the owner, a newly organized consortium of forty German shipowners purchased the ships.''Stiftung Pamir und Passat'' oundation ''Pamir'' and ''Passat''/ref> For the next five years ''Passat'' (and ''Pamir'') continued to sail between Europe and the east coast of South America, primarily to Argentina, but not around Cape Horn.Stark, p. 201

In 1957, a few weeks after the tragic loss of ''Pamir'' in mid-Atlantic and shortly after having been severely hit by a storm, ''Passat'' was decommissioned. She had almost experienced the same fate as the ''Pamir'' when her loose barley cargo shifted.

''Passat'' was purchased in 1959 by the Baltic Sea municipality of Lübeck and is now a youth hostel, venue, museum ship, and landmark moored at Travemünde, a borough of Lübeck in the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Sister ships

''Passat'''s true sister ship is the ''Peking.'' The ''Pamir'' has often been, and is still discussed as ''Passat'''s sister ship because both ships were owned and operated by the same consortium of German shipowners in the 1950s. The last eight four-masted barques ordered by Laeisz have been incorrectly called "The Eight Sisters" because of their similarity, including ''Pangani'', ''Petschili'', ''Pamir'', ''Passat'', ''Peking'', ''Priwall'', ''Pola'' (which never sailed under the Laeisz flag) and ''Padua'', now under the Russian flag as the training ship '' Kruzenshtern''. Of these eight ships, ''Pangani'', ''Petschili'', ''Pamir'' and ''Padua '' had no true sister ships.

See also

*Flying P-Liner
*Pamir (ship)

References

*Apollonio, Spencer (Editor). ''The Last of the Cape Horners, Firsthand Accounts from the Final Days of the Commercial Tall Ships''. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's. 2000.
*Stark, William F. ''The Last Time Around Cape Horn. The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer Pamir''. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. 2003.

Footage of the ''Passat ''on the internet

* Original footage of the ship from 1957 is included in the documentary by Heinrich Klemme
''Die Pamir''
("The ''Pamir''", 1959).
:A clip of the German documentary is available a
www.schiele-schoen.de
with the last 29 seconds featuring Passat (not under sails) shortly after she was hit by a severe storm in 1957.

External links

*
Older official websitePhotos of the Passat

{{DEFAULTSORT:Passat (Ship)
Ships built in Hamburg
1911 ships
Individual sailing vessels
Barques
Windjammers
Four-masted ships
Tall ships of Germany
Merchant ships of Germany
World War I merchant ships of Germany
World War II merchant ships of Germany
Tall ships of West Germany
Merchant ships of West Germany
Lübeck
Museum ships in Germany
Port of Lübeck